People prepared to jump through the hoops you describe are not the target. They already know how to evade surveillance.

This bill is bringing the internet and postal service into line with what the security services can already do with your phone line.

Your local council, for instance, can already ask the police to request your telephone records (who you called, when and for how long). Now they will be able to ask who sent you mail or email and which websites you visited.

None of this enables people to inspect your mail, or email, or your transactions with websites any more than they can eavesdrop on your phone calls.

They will still need a court order to do that.

I don't agree with this bill but we should fight it with facts, not FUD.

In other words, the secure channel you think you've established with a web site is in fact a channel to the black box, which records the content and passes on the requests and responses from a central point.

(I am not a security analyst, but I think major corporates already do this when you're inside their firewall)

This crazy policy has only affected non-US users. It was first raised 3 years ago, but Flickr refused to change their policy until a well-known journalist and a celeb got involved and started creating bad publicity for them.